


Victory

by Lobelia321



Category: Napoleonic Era RPF
Genre: Battle Of Waterloo, Battle of La Haye Sainte, Historical, King's German Legion, M/M, Napoleonic Wars
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-24
Updated: 2015-08-24
Packaged: 2018-04-17 01:31:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 548
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4647273
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lobelia321/pseuds/Lobelia321
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ensign George Frank and Lieutenant John Graeme of the King's German Legion are the last left in the farm house of La Haye Sainte as it falls to the French.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Victory

After a desperate day's fighting, the farm finally fell.

Ensign George Frank felt numb and pumped full of adrenaline, all at the same time.

Graeme and Carey were with him at the last, two lieutenants, and he only a humble ensign. As they covered the others' retreat at the passageway into the kitchen garden, the only way out that remained, Graeme said, "John", and George understood that he was confiding his Christian name at this moment of extremity. He swallowed and said, "George."

He never got to hear Carey's first name. A shot rang out, and it was the bullet meant for him. A Frenchman in the passageway, crouched over his musket, the high whistle of ammunition past his head. But he wasn't dead. His breath rasped through his body. And there was Lieutenant Graeme -- "John" -- running the Frenchman through with this sword. Another jumped into the passage, and John sliced him right across his face.

More attackers piled into the narrow entrance. George saw them, and saw how one of them leveled his rifle at the lieutenant. "John!" George yelled out, "take care!"

"Never mind!" cried John, "let the blackguard fire."

But George leaped upon the man and stabbed him in the mouth and through the neck with his sabre. The man slumped to the ground. Blood and gore squelched into the mud. "Damn", gasped George.

Almost straight away a shot rang out. Blind hot pain exploded in George's arm. He staggered back against John, his mouth open without sound. But John pushed him aside and ran forward although George couldn't really see what was going on; a mist flickered in his eyes. He tried to move his arm but it hung at his side. He didn't dare look; it felt limp and larger than it should.

The others were gone. Men were piling through the passageway. Shouts and shots rang out. Somewhere he could hear John's voice, "that's the rogue", then everything whirled and George fell down.

Everyone now shouted in French. George bit down on his lower lip until he tasted blood and forced himself back into the farmhouse. Men swarmed in through the front door but he remembered the back stairs and crawled up them, hauling himself from step to step by his good arm. The pain throbbed from the top of his head right down into his balls.

Upstairs, there was a bed, and he rolled underneath it just as the first lot of Frenchmen trampled into the chamber.

Nobody saw him.

There he lay, doubled in on himself, his teeth clamped down on his rifle belt to prevent himself from crying out with the pain. He drifted in and out of consciousness. What he heard were shots, shouts, explosions, bangs, confused rumblings and the clatter of boots.

Then, in the distance and as if it were a hallucination, the call, in English, "Victory! Victory!"

Ensign George Frank emerged from his hide-out at dusk. The farm yard was a mess of bodies, blood and bones.

George blinked into the red-and-pink evening.

"Damn it, man! You're alive!" 

"What... John!"

"And... Lieutenant Carey?"

"Injured. But alive!"

"And... we won?"

"Victory," John said. "Victory!"

George held on to John's sleeve as he limped into the kitchen garden. Victory.

Somehow it didn't feel like that.

 

THE END.

**Author's Note:**

> Based on the Battle of La Haye Sainte, part of the Battle of Waterloo, as fought on 18 June 1815. The King's German Legion, a legion made up of German officers and soldiers but part of King George's army, defended the tiny farm house for all of that day at one of the bloodiest and doomed battles of that day. At dusk, the Prussian army arrived, and Napoleon's army retreated in disarray. The day was won, and it was in large part due to the King's German Legion having held out at the farm house for so many hours and diverting French troops away from elsewhere. The other and more famous battle at the Battle of Waterloo was the Battle of Hougoumont. My source was Brendan Simms' book 'The Longest Afternoon: How Four Hundred Germans Decided the Battle of Waterloo' (2014).


End file.
